Response Paper to 'Reconceptualizing Translation Theory’ by Maria Tymoczko

In her paper ‘Reconceptualizing Translation Theory’, Maria Tymoczko mainly argues for the broadening of the Translation Studies field by including non-Western and marginal Western thinking, in order to get a panoramic view of the field and set the basis of a translation theory that would account all forms and traditions throughout the world. Her approach stems from postcolonial studies, and acts as a reaction to the hegemony of the West imposed on the rest of the world, and against the ‘positivist framework’ and the ‘generalized and prescriptive discourse’ (14) of the current trends.

In order to be able to build new foundations in reconceptualizing translation theory, the main assumptions drawn from Western thinking must be first deconstructed. As such, Tymoczko puts forth the most common myths of contemporary thinking on translation. The most notorious are: translators seen solely as professionals with degrees or special training, or acting as mediators between two cultures who never happen to be plurilingual; translations which involve only written texts, and most of the time these texts are taken for granted as the Western canon – drama, epic and lyric- the rest being left outside; objects of study in TS are already defined, and therefore are supposed to stay forever encrypted in their crystallized form; the lines between the source and the target texts are settled for good, with a few minor disagreements. These assumptions are taken for granted in the contemporary TS mainstream thinking, and Tymoczko argues that changes must be done in order to establish a solid basis for a universal accepted translation theory.

Her suggestions in overcoming the miss-outs encountered mainly involve acknowledging various traditions from outside the Western canon, like oral cultures and their type of texts, different than the canonized ones, being aware of the existence of multilingualism and multiculturalism, and recognizing translational activity beyond professionalism.

Further on the author proposes three modes of cultural interface that would hold back the ‘Eurocentric stereotypes of translation’ (27) and prevent non-Western cultures to assimilate these canonized paradigms and concepts that exist through English terminology, and which might eventually end up as the ultimate hegemonic prototypes. These modes are ‘transmission’, seen as symbolic transfer of material across cultures, ‘representation’, which would both construct and symbolically substitute the image of an object into the target culture, and transculturation, or ‘the transmission of cultural characteristics from one cultural group to another’ (28).

Tymoczko constructs in a short paper very ample and well structured arguments which both denounce Eurocentrism and Western hegemony and come with solutions for preventing this tendency to fully occur. I would argue that her idea of reconceptualizing translation theory is a step forward into the TS field that would facilitate cultures with traditions in translation to make their strategies and methods well-known.

References:

Tymoczko, Maria (2006): Reconceptualizing Translation Theory. Integrating Non-Western Thought about Translation, in Hermans, T. (Eds),Translating Others: Volume 1, St. Jerome Publishing, UK: Manchester